In the previous issue, we ruminated on war. Words, missiles, legislation; from states flaunting military might, inflicting genocide on entire populations – to often overlooked micro-aggressions at the scale of the community and individual body.

It feels impossible to move beyond this theme of war when the conflicts persist. Over the last few months, international diplomacy seems all but obsolete and perhaps we are more divided, tense and angry than ever before. We cannot move beyond war, because these acts of war are all-consuming and seemingly never-ending.

Turning to one of the journal’s original contributors, ethnobotanist and literary naturalist Gary Nabhan:

“Regardless of how many casualties and refugees are already tallied by hospitals and relief agencies, many more people will be killed, wounded, and displaced unless we collectively yearn with all of our hearts for a different kind of news. It must be news of a certain peace, one in which people of many faiths and many colors are once again ensured the right to celebrate their own distinctive sense of place – not in exile, but with access to places they call home. To exercise the right to feel deeply placed in the world, each of us must give up using labels that make a particular valley my homeland, but not yours, or that make you a member of a “chosen people” in a manner that excludes me or my kin.”

As we enter the 20th year of publication for “You Are Here,” it might be timely to pose, what has changed in the last two decades? Is this transformation of the land and people for better, for worse, or are we stuck in stagnation?How do we envision moving forward?Is it possible to break these cycles of violence? We seek your visual and written plans for reconciliation, rehabilitation, decolonization and beyond. How do we name, work towards and actualize peace here and now?